Blogging For Hire: Professional Blogger Wanted

I’d really like to know who’s out there for hire, and what your background/experiences being a blogger for hire are.

* Do you get regular work?
* How do you find new clients?
* How do new clients find you?
* What is the most difficult challenge you face in your work?

I’d like to know also, so you can post here and there, and help us understand what it takes to be a professional blogger, what are the qualifications necessary, and how you find professional blogging work.

As a side note, I’d love to know who is blogging professionally pretending to be the blogger they aren’t. I wrote recently about celebrity bloggers using hired staff to blog their blogs pretending to be the famous celebrity, so I’d love to know if you, as a professional blogger, are blogging as someone else. In other words, are you a ghost blogger. 😉

The one and most important thing they’d look for would be previous experience as a professional blogger. I’ve seen some blog networks put up forms asking professional bloggers to submit “sample blog posts.” IMO that seems pretty pretentious. A professional blog should justify everything.

Since I’m no good at guess work, a more appropriate question for me would be “What would you be looking in a blogger if you’re going to hire one?” The answer will depend on what will I be hiring the blogger for to blog about.

My choice would be a blogger who writes about diverse things. Say… different subjects. Since each subject matter has it’s own lingo and vocabulary, people who can write about varying topics could grasp a new subject if given and get into it and write sensibly smart in a very short period of time.

A network probably owns a group of blogs on one or several topics, as well as a bunch of bloggers who are either paid to blog or volunteering. It seems like blogging in a network isn’t as hot as it was a few years ago.

Thanks for the heads up Lorelle… I’m both a blogger and blogger for hire, and have been approached a couple of times to blog professionally for a number of small Australian companies.

I started and still run Camarilla, Australia’s indy fashion blog, and run my own self-branded personal blog. Pro blogging is something I’m keen to do, but at the moment it’s hard to balance pro blogging, my own blogging, my study and full-time day job!

I’m hoping to crack the freelance blog hire market and take on some fun, casual pro blogging gigs – not ready for full-time yet.

Hiring Joe Blogger to market your business or be a celebrity ghost writer makes about as much sense as shopping for prostitutes in Detroit (not that I’ve done that recently): you won’t find Julia Roberts there; you’re getting a toothless wonder looking to trade her hoochy for some Tina. Unless Joe Blogger got his undergrad in Writing/Editing (dear bloggers, it is spelled definitely, not definately or defiantly) and a MBA with Marketing emphasis, he wouldn’t work for me.

Hi Lorelle, love your blog. I read it everyday.
To be a professional blogger, one definitely needs to know how to write. Being knowledgeable about the subject matter would be key.
Knowing what the others are blogging about is important, as is posting regularly. The professional blogger would need to know what others are blogging about.
In an effort to become a better blogger, I follow over one hundred blogs a day on my feed reader. You could say I am addicted.
I love it, would love to find a way to get paid for it. Who wouldn’t!
I do not believe one needs formal education, if they have the skills. This is becoming true in many types of jobs. Skills are transferrable.

I’m a professional wordsmith with years of experience in writing and editing. I waited to start a blog until my first book came out. My personal blog spans matters of writing, editing, speculative fiction, nature and environment, current events — whatever catches my eye.

I’d love to get into professional blogging. I write fast, I have a vivid voice, and I’m good at research. To me blogging is just one more type of writing; I could manage a blog on just about any topic that I could cover in an article or column. So I’m hunting around for ways to make this another profitable use of my language skills.

From a hiring perspective, it makes all the sense in the world to higher a problogger. Most companies and organizations aren’t about writing, especially writing to grab people’s attention. They’re better off hiring an expert. Then all they have to do is set the desired parameters (length of post, posts per day or week, etc.) and provide some targeting information (company’s product info, organization’s vision statement, etc.) for the blogger to work with. You’ll get a lot better results by hiring a writer to write than by trying to teach an executive how to amuse and inform people in 250 words a day!

That’s it. And no one can “help you out” except yourself. If you think this is a get-rich-quick game, you are in the wrong game.

Do not expect to make money of any consequences for three to twelve months. Some never make any. Most never pay their rent, let alone food bill.

Other than that, blog your passion and be patient. And learn, study, and do, fall down, get up. That’s it. I’ve been doing this for over a decade and blogging alone does not pay my bills. Don’t expect it to do so for you for a long time.

I have read many of the excellent comments posted here on pro blogging. The tsunami for demand of bloggers is coming. Writing is the core skill of a blogger, but various past experiences and skills can come into play for engaging a client for a serious blogging consultant contract.

In 25 years of being in the information technology arena, I have never wasted time playing with any technology that wasn’t profitable. As Ms. VanFossen mentioned, any skill is developed by “learn, study, and do, fall down, get up”. Blogging combined with RSS technology is worth the time in honing your skills. Blogging can and will be more profitable in 2008.

Blogging has the potential of being extremely profitable. There are many success stories that confirm this fact. Last year Walmart hired 130 bloggers to do nothing but write nice things about the company their products. Check the 2006 New York Magazine article “Blogs to Riches” this stories may seem like exceptions in 2006 (AOL paid $25Mil for Engadget.com), but there will be more in 2008.

More companies are slowly hired more bloggers in 2007. 2008 will bring on many more opportunities for bloggers.

Any person who wants to be successful as a professional blogger, must think like a business owner, not an employee or freelance worker bee. Be prepared to educate each potential client on the benefits of blogging and how it compliments a webs site. Now is the time to hone your skills. Be prepared to provide a blogging “value proposition” to a potential client. Be prepared to provide clients with blog analytics. This helps justify a continued business relationship from month to month.

Clients are interested in how a blog is going to exponentially bring more visitors to their web site, which dramatically improves sales for their bottom line. Writing skills are a blogger’s capital, but business savvy is what closes the initial deal for the blogging contract.

Those who currently blog, learn to use all the blogging syndication tools available to continuously get your name around the world. Syndication tools bring blogging requests to me on a pretty regular basis, although I have regular blogging clients. Of course there is a plethora of affiliate marketing programs to assist with creating passive income for a dedicated blogger.

Weblogs, Inc. is one of those networks mentioned in a previous comment above that is looking for paid bloggers. They have many topics for a professional blogger to choose from.

I myself, have been helping create a web site, which involves blogging each day, and much more. I was building forums for a friend, until the site blew up over night! I am currently waiting…or should I say, “looking”, for other opportunities to arise now. I guess I was a “Ghost Blogger” in a way, because I was pretending, or putting on an act, to help build this site. Other than than, I mixed in the reality of my life, with the topic that I was working on, and I made it work. I love working online and am currently in need of another Job, especially one of this nature. It would be greatly appreciated if I could get any feedback, on this job. Thank you very much, Jessica.

I’m sorry, but am I missing something? There is no “job” here being requested. It’s an article about the issue of blogging for hire.

And if you are looking for feedback, a rambling, poorly written comment is not a way to solicit a blogging job. Leaving a comment on an unrelated blog post is an indication that you haven’t read the blog post and you lack attention to details.

My understanding is that ghost blogging is when you don’t use your real name. Like, for instance, if there was a company that wanted to have a blog, but didn’t have a writer or didn’t have the time to do it, they might hire it out. That, to me, is a bit less phony than if you were to be a ghost blogger for, say, a famous celebrity.

But there are also many jobs out there just blogging for a company or network, where they have a group of people working on the same blog.

Look for job posting boards that list freelance writing jobs, you will find blogging jobs there. Or you can set up a Google alert for “ghost writer” or “ghost blogger”, though that will lead you to many stories, like this one, that discuss the concept without offering a job. That’s how I ended up here. It’s interesting to read the post and comments, even if I didn’t find a job opportunity.

My thought is that the successful ghost blogger is able to blog using a “voice” that is not their own, but also that they must be knowledgeable and passionate about the subject matter. I wouldn’t be any good writing a blog on business and stock market news, for instance.

Blogging is just like any other career. Study everything you can on the subject. Practice by setting up your own blogs and writing regularly. The hard part for me was learning to slow down and proofread everything I write. Once you are ready to blog for a living, google “blog jobs” and see what is available. I personally like freelance and being self employed, but I think the market for bloggers is potentially huge.